Iraqi Envoy Assesses Gains, Shortcomings of Occupation

The United States did the right thing by deposing Saddam Hussein but was not serious enough about security in the early days of the occupation, the country’s envoy to the United States said Friday.

The proof, Rend Rahim Francke told an audience at Princeton University, was in the broadcast images of Iraqis looting last spring as U.S. soldiers stood by.

She said those pictures showed “the failure of the U.S. to impose law and order in Iraq or even to signal that law and order was a priority for the coalition.”

Francke, an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen who is the U.S.-based representative of the Iraqi Governing Council, is not officially an ambassador because her birth nation does not have a permanent government. When she was appointed late last year, Francke became the Iraqi government’s first envoy to the United States since 1990.

She shared a panel Friday afternoon with Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, assistant division commander of the 101st Airborne Division.

Schloesser said the military was focused on rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure and social institutions from the beginning, and said the speed of Saddam’s overthrow kept Iraq from being in worse shape.

“We were trying to remove Saddam Hussein without causing major damage to the infrastructure, and most importantly, civil society,” Schloesser said.

Francke, who spent several months in Iraq last year, said the invasion cost fewer Iraqi lives than she feared. She said it accomplished a mission that was giving her homeland new hope.

“The central part -- the crux -- of Iraq’s modern history is Saddam’s overthrow,” she said.